that afghanistan will remain a dangerous place. our presence here will be far more narrowly described in terms of training and advising the system at the upper echelons. not at the level where we will be on patrol with the afghans or not on the level where we will be partnered with them in small tactical formations. rather at the core level. at the to and three-star level and above. what they really need from us is not our firepower with some exceptions. what they really need from us is our expertise in logistics and communications and signal a medical survey can build their own systems over time that can sustain that tactical fighting force. the tactical fighting force is

credible and confident today. they will go out and fight. what they need to figure out is how to sustain themselves with logistics and communications, intelligence. we will be operating at that level, not without risk, but for those who are weary of war. it will be a very different mission. host: host: he said down with nbc news. others may say why stay there? what is the u.s. interests and thus remaining even if it is a residual forces or advisors to help train and rebuild? guest: there is a general assessment that while we have made progress in a innocent, including with equipping afghan national security forces, they are not really ready to stay in the field very effectively if we leave very rapidly. with equippn national security forces, they are not really ready to stay in the field very effectively if we leave very rapidly. they have been trained. there are caps and the officer corps. they do not have the communications of war, the organization. will be anure they

effective security force without us. the point would be to try to enough forces to gradually reduce that over time rather than do it all at once. forces willthat the fall apart. host: please discuss the outcome where the u.s. try soldiers for crimes committed. who accounts for the contractors? guest: it is a problem. there are an enormous amount of contracts. i am sure many see this as critical to why they would a bilateralts of security agreement. there is an important point to make. leaderin a position of now opposes the agreement with agreed.s that have been this is over. he has been a stick in the mud on the issue. it has more to say about him

than the specific terms of this agreement. let's listen to brian joining from michigan. council fellow with the on foreign relations. good morning. having spent time in the middle it wasars ago, i just hard to believe that 9/11 would come. it is audacious to believe we could actually hold some way for years and years to come, especially in a landlocked countries such as afghanistan. what perplexes me is when: werel came out and they tied together. he said if you break it you have to fix it. i reject that notion. they're going to do what they need to do. this is how it is tied into afghanistan. knowing the expenses will be so

exorbitant to try to hold sway again. if we were to look at it objectively, we would have had a force in afghanistan. gone in anddone is got hussein and gotten the heck out. >> there are good arguments to make about how difficult it is to remake a country like afghanistan. anybody who had hoped that we would be in for a long-term true commitment has been severely disappointed, not just by the fact that we have decided to move away from that i did was never as successful as they might have hoped. that is effectively over. --are debating the team between 10,000 forces in the continuing training mission that may or may not hold together. in a relatively time-limited cents or a zero option that is isly out very rapidly, which

more likely to lead to a rapid acceleration of violence and instability in afghanistan. it is something that we may be able to avoid. the larger question about the u.s. role in the middle east. this is something that has been a critical aspect of the debate in afghanistan. beis going to continue to debated by politicians and historians. what contracting firm is benefiting the most from staying in afghanistan? guest: i do not know. there are lots that have been buildingin some of the operations in terms of infrastructure, roads. involved ineen building up bases. you have heard some of the stories about efforts to build up enormous sicilia fees that will actually not be used.

perhaps with the expectation that we would be around. now they're just turning into these enormous warehouse is that will probably fall into disrepair relatively rapidly. is president karzai firmly in control? guest: he has been a contentious leader since his last election in 2009. there areon has been questions about the way he was voted in. a lot of improper uses of polls and so on. a lot of corruption. is he acting logically? given the circumstances that he faces and the fact he has multiple audiences, afghan, regional, the united dates, nato, his own personal interest, it is hard to say that being is not a relatively

sane response. try to push them out of power as early as 2009. he believes the obama administration is completely against them. president obama did talk to him the other day. the first time since june. karzai has made it clear that he says of this as something less the interest of and certainlyl serving his political interests and more serving a very narrow conception of u.s. interest fighting terrorists. is not sure that working with us is in his best interest. he is working against us. that has been true for a while. decisionthey make a point, our guest is with the council on foreign relations. think he for joining us from tens or -- your joining us from tennessee. karzai wasknow that

the president before he got his position as president of afghanistan. to serve the purposes of doing a pipeline down from into the gulf to bring that and just recently they discovered a large rare earth minerals in that area. --rica's dominance and oil in oil and rare earth is seen as part of what they're trying to accomplish over there. are aboutilization the entire region and could only end up in world war iii. i think americans are very concerned. out of thatpull entire region and let them take care of themselves. taking care of themselves

as right in a sense. i just think anybody is suggesting the united states has a long-term interest in occupying afghanistan. should we stick around in a limited capacity to help what remains of what we built in terms of an afghan national security force for a matter of several years or should we pick up our game or even tip it over and mark it out expeditiously. i would rather try to hold this together. part of it has to do not with u.s. interest in minerals or oil wealth, we do not stand to gain a whole deal here. there has been relatively less interest by u.s. corporations than there has been from chinese corporations and others from the region. it is not a matter of enriching u.s. companies. it is a matter of trying to hold

together a very dangerous, not particularly well developed country for a longer time so that the problem of international terrorism that we new from 9/11 don't find a safe haven inside of afghanistan. if we are to look at afghanistan as a series of incomplete excesses, or one of the things we would have to say is that the problem of al qaeda has been significantly reduced. the threat of international terrorism has been host: get responses to a couple other comments. let's get this straight. the u.s. wants the leader of the afghan people to sign an agreement that allows american troops to kill afghans without a risk of prosecution should innocent afghans also end up as casualties while u.s. forces remain in that country for another decade as occupiers afthis country. is this correct? guest: i wouldn't characterize it that way. what i would say is we want a similar arrangement to what

we've had over the past period of time. that is a legal arrangement with the afghan government that when u.s. forces do things considered to be wrong they will be prosecuted but that they will not be held up in courts inside of afghanistan, that we would have questions about the legitimacy of, if they were held there. we do not want u.s. forces to fear they will end up in afghan prisons or that they will be seen before an afghan justice system that is less fair and free than we would hope. host: another comment. this is from jan. guest: so two broad points here. the writ of the afghan state has been something very much in question over the past decade plus. and it's been clear that historicically kabul and anybody who has led from kabul

has been relatively weak and not capable of a centralized tight control over the rest of the country. but this isn't to say that afghanistan hasn't been a nation. it's been a nation for hundreds of years and it also isn't to say that afghanistan hasn't known better time. it has. earlier in the cold war, afghanistan was relatively in better situations certainly far better than it is now. and way way better than it was under the taliban. so there are degrees of failure and afghanistan could succeed marginally better than it has. i think just as one measure of how bad things were under the taliban life expectancy inside of afghanistan has gone up by 20 years over the past 10 years in terms of an average afghan will live 20 years longer now. this is an enormous shift. and so anybody who suggests things couldn't get considerably worse i think is quite wrong. on the drug trade, i think this is one of the most significant problems that we will leave behind in afghanistan.

in terms of the broader economy the drug trade is estimated to be something in the order of 30% of the total economy. anything that occupies such a central role in an economy is going to lead to corruption, it's going to lead to changed incentives. and whether or not president karzai himself personally benefits from it, there are many afghan members of the state and important leaders in the society who do. and so this is going to continue to be a problem. >> the next call is chris. good morning. oining us from columbus, ohio. caller: good morning. my question would be for the overall outcome of afghanistan that you think we would have achieved the same results by doing what the brits did in the region in the 19th century which could be sum rised as finding the militia powerful enough to have control giving them guns and money and letting them run internal affairs.

guest: interesting question. among other option we might have had this is one. we could have gone in, stayed very light. effectively subcontracted out afghanistan to local war lords. and some would say that we did a fair amount of that. a lot of afghan leaders, including some of the people who are going to be running for the presidency in early april of this year were former war lords. so a lot of that subcontracting out of responsibilities as a practical matter has been done. president karzai is somebody that we picked up, saw him to be useful, effectively put him into power with the rest of the international community, and many willing afghans, and so in some ways we have done that there, too. i would point to a critical juncture in the war in afghanistan as being our decision to shift gears and open up a different front, which is the wake. up until that point, there -- war in iraq. up until then there was in

pakistan, india and elsewhere, that we would in fact see through the afghan war enterprise in a much more effective way. when that happened, and we were very clearly distracted many resources shifteded over to the iraq war, then there were all kinds of new questions being raised inside of afghanistan, including among afghans about just how serious we were in this war and in this effort to rebuild this country. let me get r says your reaction to nato secretary general the former prime minister of denmark now overseeing operations in brussels. he spoke to reporters last wednesday. >> we all know the facts. if the bilateral security agreement between the united states and afghanistan is not signed, there will be no nato status of forces agreement with afghanistan.

and if there is no agreement, there will be no nato troops in afghanistan after 2014. let me stress, this is not our preferred option. but these are the facts. facts that we need to take into account in our planning. host: that goes back to the earlier point about what the military needs to do. why so much lead time? it's a complex issue in terms of moving troops around and figuring out where they're going to stay both short and long term. but what other variables are in place? guest: it is the question of logistics and planning. i think the u.s. military, i know they would have much preferred to have this bilateral security agreement in place late last year so they could basically chart out a full year plan that they would know that by year's end 2014 they would have 10,000 or so forces in place where they would be, what their missions

would be, and all of the equipment and materiel that they wouldn't need would have made its way out of the country largely by way of pakistan, the northern routes. that's the critical issue has been the planning issue. now that they haven't gotten that arrangement or they haven't gotten it in time, they will be planning on the go, they will be making some basic assessments about what they need to do, some guesswork, and this makes them very uncomfortable. and beyond that, it hurts our nato partners because they're also trying to make plans and they also need to know whether they'll be keeping forces in afghanistan or going down to zero like we may be doing. host: final question. what's the timeline for all this? for the u.s. to make a decision. guest: well, the u.s. is probably not going to make a decision until a new afghan government is in place. the afghan elections, the first round will be in early april. then they'll probably be a subsequent round. so we're talking in the july,

timeframe, there will be a new government in place, assuming things go smoothly, the u.s. government will reach out to that new leadership and attempt to get an agreement there. then they'll have the rest of the year to get the logistics in motion. host: as we talk about the situation in afghanistan and the future of u.s. looks of the latest update and you are international stories follow i the wall street journal's health care policy reporter jennifer orbit doran. she will talk about the impact of the health care law that lately men efforts to create manufacturing comes around the country. "washington journal" library

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